The Johns Hopkins University Press Society For The History of Technology

Andean Value Systems and the Development of Prehistoric Metallurgy
Author(s): Heather Lechtman

Source: Technology and Culture, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 1-36
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the History of Technology
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Andean Value Systemsand the
Developmentof PrehistoricMetallurgy
HEATHER LECHTMAN
The rich development of metallurgical technology that arose and

was sustained in the New World prior to the Spanish invasion in the
16th century took place in the Andean zone of western South
America in that area which is today Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Co-
lombia. Although Andean peoples supported a highly sophisticated
metallurgical tradition with the production of a broad range of metals
and metal alloys, little interest or attention has been paid to Andean
metallurgy, perhaps because archaeologists and historians cannot
boast of a "bronze age" or an "iron age" as characteristic of New
World prehistory. Iron metallurgy was never developed in the Andes.
Although both ancient varieties of bronze were invented there-the
alloys of copper and arsenic and of copper and tin-and tin bronze was
widely used and disseminated throughout its vast empire by the Inca
dynasty, nevertheless these metals did not have the same impact on
Andean civilization that they had among peoples of Europe and the
ancient Near East.
If we were to ask the question, "What was the sphere of activities
and interests from which metallurgy derived its greatest stimulation
and achieved its most important developments among ancient
societies of the New World and the Old?" we would come to see that
the two metallurgical "revolutions" associated with bronze and iron in
the Old World resulted from the demand for and impact of those
metals primarily in two domains of life, warfare and transport, with
agriculture running a close third. (In this discussion, the Old World
covers a broad geographic area, including most of modern Europe
Ms. LECHTMANis professor of archaeology and ancient technology at MIT where she
holds a joint appointment in the Anthropology-Archaeology Section and the Depart-
ment of Materials Science and Engineering. She is also director of the interinstitutional
Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology. Portions of this article
were read at the 1978 meeting of the Society for the History of Technology, in the
session on "Metals in History," organized as a symposium honoring Cyril Stanley Smith.
The present article is dedicated to Prof. Smith.
? 1984 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.
0040-165X/84/2501-0002$01.00
1

2 Heather Lechtman
and the Middle East, and a great depth of time, spanning the Bronze
Age [ca. 3000-1200 B.C.] and Iron Age [ca. 1200 B.C.-A.D. 300].)
In Europe and in the Near East, both in the hand-to-hand combat
of the foot soldier and in equestrian battle, the effectiveness of
weapons was based largely on their piercing and cutting action.
Knives, daggers, long and short swords, lance heads, spears, javelins,
and battle-axes of bronze and later of iron became the new arsenal,
replacing stone, wood, and bone weapons that could not compare in
strength and durability. The manufacture of such offensive weapons
was accompanied by the equally important production of their defen-
sive counterparts, namely, body armor, some of the finest examples of
which-such as the 7th-century-B.c. Cretan bronze helmets, corselets,
and mitrai in the Norbert Schimmel collection-are often exhibited
today in museums of art. Iron armor scales have been found that date
to the 11th century B.C., accompanying the early use of iron for of-
fensive weaponry in the Near East and the Aegean.
Although few examples remain of metal-rimmed wheels from
chariots, wagons, carts, and other such vehicles, it is clear that the
availability of bronze, and more especially of iron, for the manufac-
ture of animal-drawn wheeled conveyances had a profound effect on
long-distance travel and the movement of goods. In Europe during
the period between 700 and 400 B.C., most weapons and tools of
bronze disappeared and were replaced by iron. Nevertheless, iron was
still an "expensive" metal. Many of the iron artifacts excavated from
this period come from graves of the wealthy. Among these items are
iron fittings of princely chariots: tires and nails, nave fittings, clamps,
and wheel pegs. By the end of the 5th century B.C., however, complex
bridge bits and wheel pegs for chariots were much more common.1 By
Roman times, the effectiveness of military legions in their movements
throughout Europe in particular was dependent on ease of transport
of the gear and provisions that accompanied them, much of it con-
veyed on wagons of wood and iron. Etruscan chariots, with bronze
fittings and iron-rimmed, spoked wheels, gave way to Roman models,
some of the most elegant of which-called by David Mitten the "Rolls
Royces" of Roman chariots-have recently been found near the vil-
lage of Siskovci in Bulgaria, ancient Thrace, with dates in the late 3d
or early 4th century A.D.2
'Jane C. Waldbaum, "The First Archaeological Appearance of Iron and the Transi-
tion to the Iron Age," in The Coming of the Age of Iron, ed. Theodore A. Wertime and
James D. Muhly (New Haven, Conn., 1980), pp. 69-98; Radomir Pleiner, "Early Iron
Metallurgy in Europe," ibid., pp. 375-415; Anthony M. Snodgrass, "Iron and Early
Metallurgy in the Mediterranean," ibid., pp. 335-374.
2David G. Mitten, personal communication; Ivan Venedikov, TrakiiskataKolesnitsa,
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia, 1960).

Andean Value Systemsand PrehistoricMetallurgy 3
The agricultural use of both bronze and iron was important in the
Old World, although it was not primarily through the manufacture of
metal tools for farming that the technology of metal production re-
ceived its greatest impetus. The Early Iron Age (ca. 1200-900 B.C.)
was a period of transition away from the use of bronze for all weapons
and implements made of metal. We see a change from the exclusive
use of bronze for plowshares, axes, adzes, and hoes at 12th-
century-B.c. habitation sites in Cyprus and Palestine, for example, to
the preferred use of iron for those same agricultural tools, as well as
sickles, by the 10th century.3 Iron approached something akin to
common use throughout the eastern Mediterranean, both for
weapons and for tools, by the end of the 10th century B.C.
Turning to the Andes, we find that in neither the sphere of war nor
that of transport did metals play an extraordinary role. There was no
cavalry in South America prior to the introduction of the horse by the
invading Spaniards. All combat was on foot. Hand-to-hand fighting
involved the use of clubs of various kinds that depended on the
crushing force of the blow delivered rather than on cutting or pierc-
ing. Of equal importance, however, were long-distance weapons that
utilized missiles. Of these, spears and spear throwers, slings and shot
were crucial to Andean styles of battle.4
It is of interest to explore why metals had such a small impact on
Andean warfare, an otherwise obvious route for the development of
metal technologies. What were the competitors of metals on the field
of battle? It may come as a surprise that one of the chief competitors
was cloth, a material used in both offense and defense.
Around 1615-roughly eighty years after the Spanish conquest of
Tawantinsuyu, the Inca empire-Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, an
Andean Indian, wrote a 1,200-page "letter" to King Philip III of
Spain. His letter, Nueva cor6nica y buen gobierno, constitutes the first
codex written in the Andes.5 Its purpose was to inform the Spanish
king of the richness of Andean civilization as it was lived under the
Inca and before the Inca and to decry the villainies of the Spaniards
who had destroyed that great heritage. The letter is illustrated with
some 397 line drawings Poma executed to accompany his text. Poma
3Waldbaum.
4Manfred Korfmann, in his article on "The Sling as a Weapon," Scientific American
229 (October 1973): 34-42, devotes one brief paragraph to the Andean use of the sling,
vi-tually neglecting its key role in Andean prehistory. The sling is still used in the Andes
today by shepherds and for hunting small game; see Adele Cahlander, Sling Braiding of
the Andes, in Weaver'sJournal Monograph 4 (Boulder, Colo., 1980).
5Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva cor6nicay buen gobierno, facsimile ed., Institut
d'Ethnologie (Paris, 1936 [1613]); the most recent and best-edited and documented
edition is that by John V. Murra and Rolena Adorno, eds., Siglo veintiuno, 3 vols.
(Mexico, 1980).

4 Heather Lechtman
depicts the first and greatest of all the Inca emperors, Pachakuti
Yupanqui (whose name meant "cataclysm"), in his role as soldier and
as conqueror (fig. 1). The weapon that Poma chose above all to denote
Pachakuti as warrior-emperor is the sling. Slings made by weaving,
braiding, and plaiting animal and vegetable fibers were among the
most important weapons used throughout Andean prehistory (fig. 2).
They are, essentially, tools of cloth. Clearly, whether an adversary
were hit by shot of stone or metal could not have made any great
difference.
For body armor, soldiers wore quilted cotton tunics or else wound
layers of cloth around their bodies. Most of the Spanish soldiers
adopted quilted armor from the Inca, regarding it as superior to
European steel breastplates, at least in the humid sierra.6 Inca soldiers
hung round shields of hard chonta palm slats and cotton on their
backs. Their heads were protected by quilted or wooden helmets.
Instead of a shield made of wood and deerskin-such as the one
Pachakuti holds in Poma's drawing-soldiers sometimes wrapped
cloth around one arm to pad it against blows.
In his other hand, Pachakuti holds the second most widely used
Andean weapon, the club. Inca clubs such as his usually had pointed,
star-shaped heads made of stone or bronze. Copper mace-heads of
similar shape had been used much earlier, however-for example,
those produced by the Mochica, a people who flourished along the
north coast of Peru from about A.D. 0 to 600 (see table 1). Again, the
effectiveness of metals as contrasted with stone in delivering a crush-
ing blow was not of great significance.
Pottery was often a medium of sculpture through which ceramic
craftsmen portrayed a wide range of activities of Mochica life. Often
soldiers are shown, with their typical heavy clubs and padded or slat-
and-cotton helmets (fig. 3). One of the most important and quite rare
scenes of Mochica battle is painted along the flaring inner lip of a
pottery vase currently in the collection of the Museum fur Volker-
kunde, Berlin (fig. 4). A group of Mochica warriors leads its captives,
who are bound with ropes tied round their necks. The soldiers carry
the typical Mochica club, but the important feature of this victory
scene lies in the nakedness of the vanquished. Among Andean
peoples, cloth was undoubtedly the item of greatest value, imbued
with ritual significance, a symbol of rank, wealth, and power. It was
not only used as a tool of war, both offensively and defensively, it also
had a magico-military significance of its own, embodying the idea of
strength and force.7 An enemy stripped of his garments was an
6Gosta Montell, Dress and Ornamentsin Ancient Peru (Goteborg, 1929).
7John V. Murra, "Cloth and Its Functions in the Inca State," AmericanAnthropologist
64 (August 1962): 710-28.

ELI/1OVEI0 VELI4Q
J
.5u( rJ
.......
.ttiy
fa
L/04 f
FIG. 1.-Pachakuti Yupanqui, ninth Inca ruler and first emperor of Tawantinsuyu, the
Inca empire, is shown as a great warrior, wearing the earspools reserved for Inca
-oyalty and wielding his sling and star-headed mace. This is one of 397 line drawings
Guaman Poma de Ayala rendered to illustrate his 1,200-page letter to Philip III of
Spain in 1613. The original manuscript is in the Royal Library of Copenhagen, Den-
mark.

6 Heather Lechtman
enemy without retaliatory capacity. His force and his energy lay in his
clothing.
Through ethnohistoric and archaeological study we have been able
to reconstruct the panoply of weapons as they existed in the Andean
highlands during Inca domination: the sling; the star-headed mace;
the spear with tip of fire-hardened wood or of bronze; the long,
sword-shaped double-edged club made of hard chonta palm wood;
and the halberd with bronze head.8 Given the style of warfare in the
Andes among both coastal and highland peoples, with weapons that
depended on strength at impact rather than on a cutting edge, metal
weapons did not confer great advantage either to the aggressor or to
the defender.
FIG. 2.-This pre-Columbian sling of wool, from a burial located on the south Peru-
vian coast, is typical of Late Nasca culture there (ca. A.D. 400-500). Less ornamented,
utilitarian slings of identical form were used by herders to control flocks of llama and
alpaca, and as offensive weapons in times of war. A slit in the cradle helped secure the
shot-a rock or occasionally a lead ball-in place. It was the custom to carry utilitarian
slings by wrapping them around one's head. Gradually they became more elaborately
designed, and some were for purely ceremonial use; the sling illustrated here was
probably never a functional tool. (Collection of the Peabody Museum, Harvard Univer-
sity; photograph by Hillel Burger.)
8John H. Rowe, "Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest," in Handbookof
South AmericanIndians, ed. Julian H. Steward, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin
143 (Washington, D.C., 1946), pp. 183-330.

TABLE 1
CHRONOLOGICALTABLE FOR CENTRAL ANDEAN PREHISTORY
Yeals Relative Chronology Histo-ical Events
1534 Colonial Period Spanish Empire

- 1500 - Late Horizon Inca Empire
1476 -
Kingdom of Chimor
Late
Intermediate
t
Period 3
3
- 1000 - -
E
Middle
Horizon Huar-i EmpireI
.
- 500 - T
a
cu
a
A.D. Early ud
0
- Intermediate C5
-0 Period
B.C.
1
- 500 -
Paracas-Nasca
Tradition
u
- 1000 -
Early
Horizon
Q
3r-
a
1
c
-=
-a
ued
rt
JZ
- 1500 -
Initial
Period
- 2000 -
Preceramic
Period

8 Heather Lechtman
Those who have traveled in the Andean area of South America-
whether to visit Quito, Cuzco, or Machu Picchu-will have been im-
pressed by the topography of that great land mass, a topography
entirely dominated by the rugged and almost impassable Andes
mountain chain. The Pacific coast of the central Andean zone consists
of a narrow strip of barren, sandy desert from which the precipitous
mountain slopes rise abruptly to the east. The wheel was neither
invented nor could it have been utilized in this part of the world.
Local fauna provided no draft animals or beasts of burden. The
largest domesticated animals of the Andes are the camelids, the llama
and alpaca. An adult llama typically carries only about 60 pounds.
Movement, including the long distances traveled by the Inca armies,
was entirely on foot along narrow roads, often hewn out of rock,
which covered the entire length of the approximately 3,000-mile ex-
FIG. 3.-A Mochica ceramic vessel in the form of a soldier, with his cone-shaped
heavy club, round slatted shield, and caplike helmet. An excellent example of such a
helmet, in the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin, is constructed of a spiral wooden
slatted frame, tightly wound with cotton wool. This pottery rendition of a Mochica
warrior suggests a padded chest, but we do not know how early in Andean prehistory
padded armor was used. (Collection of the British Museum, London.)

panse of the empire. There was, in essence, no transport technology
into which metals could be incorporated.
The combination of a steep, vertical terrain and the unavailability
of local fauna large and strong enough to be suitable as draft animals
resulted in highland agricultural technologies based on terracing and,
where terraces were not used, on long periods of fallow combined
with the most conservative amounts of soil movement in tillage to
minimize erosion and the ever present threat of downslope loss of soil
by gravity. Thus the chaqui taclla, the Andean foot plow-a tool that
functions as both hbe and digging stick-became the most important
implement for planting, and in many highland areas it remains so.
The blades of such tools were typically of stone, though bronze blades
are known from the Peruvian north coast that date to about A.D. 1000,
and modern blades are forged from iron. The animal-drawn plow
was introduced by the Spaniards in the 16th century.
In the Andes, metals performed in the realm of the symbolic, in
both the secular and the religious spheres of life. They carried and
displayed the content or message of status, wealth, and political power
and reinforced the affective power of religious cult objects. We can
FIG. 4.-A painted scene of victors and vanquished on the flaring, inner lip of a
Mochica ceramic vessel. The Mochica soldiers, in full battle dress, lead their naked
prisoners, bound with ropes. The clubs shown here are identical with that held by the
kneeling soldier of the sculpted vessel in fig. 3. (Collection of the Museum fur Volker-
kunde, Berlin.)

10 Heather Lechtman
recognize these functions in a series of artifacts ranging from the

earliest consistent use of metal in the Andes to its employment during
the Inca hegemony.
Status among Andean peoples, as in many societies, was instantly
conveyed by what one wore in life and by what one wore at death.
Earspools, for example, were the appurtenances of men of high
rank-perhaps kings or priests. Some of the earliest and most splen-
did examples are of Mochica origin (fig. 5). Although we have spools
of wood and others covered with feathers or inlaid with precious
stones and shells, the finest are often made from metal.9 Their im-
FIG. 5.-A splendid earspool from the site of Loma Negra, on the far north coast of
Peru. This example dates to the period when the Mochica held sway on the north coast
(ca. A.D. 300-400). The raptorial bird, probably a harpy eagle, is fashioned from sheet
silver and mechanically attached to a round, flat plaque of hammered sheet gold. (The
bird has often been identified as a condor-I labeled it as such in Heather Lechtman,
Antonieta Erlij, and Edward J. Barry, Jr., "New Perspectives on Moche Metallurgy:
Techniques of Gilding Copper at Loma Negra, Northern Peru," AmericanAntiquity47
[January 1982]: 3-30-but this is probably an error. Donald Lathrap argues con-
vincingly that raptors such as this one, when depicted on Andean artifacts with mas-
sive tarsi, markedly recurved bills, and crests, probably represent the harpy eagle. See
Lathrap, "The Tropical Forest and the Cultural Context of Chavin," in DumbartonOaks
Conferenceon Chavin, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson [Washington, D.C., 1971], pp. 73-100.)
But the rear disk of that same plaque as well as the cylindrical spool that passes through
the ear lobe (not visible here) are made of tumbaga, a copper-gold alloy containing only
10 percent gold. The golden surfaces of the rear disk and the cylinder were achieved
through depletion gilding. (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michael C.
Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979; photograph
by Thomas A. Brown.)
9Julie Jones, "Mochica Works of Art in Metal: A Review," in Pre-ColumbianMetallurgy

of South America, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C., 1979), pp. 53-104;
Heather Lechtman, Antonieta Erlij, and Edward J. Barry, Jr., "New Perspectives on
Moche Metallurgy: Techniques of Gilding Copper at Loma Negra, Northern Peru,"
AmericanAntiquity 47 (January 1982): 3-30.

portance as conveyers of status and worldly or spiritual power was

formally institutionalized by the Inca who alone were permitted to
wear them. Poma's drawing of Pachakuti (fig. 1) shows the emperor
wearing such earspools. In Poma's illustrations, we can distinguish
between members of the royal lineage and other individuals on the
basis of their garments and whether they wear earspools. In fact, the
Spaniards referred to the Inca as orejones-big ears-reflecting this
practice.
Nose rings are another form of dress that was highly elaborated in
the Andes, somewhat more among the peoples inhabiting what is
today Ecuador and Colombia than among those in Peru. Neverthe-
less, recent finds along the far north coast of Peru, in the Piura River
valley near the Ecuadorean border, have included some large, ex-
tremely fine nose rings of hammered silver and gold. Figure 6 illus-
trates such a ring fashioned to represent a personage with impressive
headdress who himself wears a silver nose ring dangling from his
pierced nasal septum, a symbol of his rank and perhaps also of his
ethnic affiliation.
At death, it was the custom in many parts of the Andes to inter the
deceased in the form of a mummy, the body wrapped around with
cloth of a quality that denoted the individual's position within the
FiG;.6.-Elaborate Mochica nose ring of gold and plated silver from the site of Loma
Negra, on the far north coast of Peru. Originally, round gold sequins dangled from the
earspools and from the broad horizontal headband, as they still do in a few areas at the
upper extremities of the headdress. The crescent ornament that dangles from the
nose of this impressive figure is made of sheet silver, now heavily tarnished. But the
other silvered areas-at the collar, on the earspools, in the headdress-are thin films of
silver which have been deposited onto the gold through a mechanism we have not yet
determined. (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Michael C.
Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979.)

12 Heather Lechtman
community during his lifetime. In addition, those of highest status

were sometimes also provided with masks of metal sewn onto or lying
just beneath the outermost layers of cloth (fig. 7). The finest and
usually the largest mummy masks are golden, though originally they
were painted and decorated with plaques of copper and other mate-
rials. Those that are most often exhibited by museums and that ap-
pear in traveling shows, such as the recent "Gold of Peru" exhibit
which toured the United States and Canada, are from the Chimu
kingdom which dominated the north coast of present-day Peru be-
tween about A.D. 1000 and 1400.
The use of certain metals in the manufacture of religious objects as
conveyers of spiritual power and for charismatic effect was no less
important than their use in the secular realm. For example, during
the Early Intermediate Period (ca. 200 B.C.-A.D. 600) on both the
north and south coasts of Peru, a cult grew up around the practice of
head taking during raids or wars on enemy groups. Archaeologists
have called it the "trophy-head" cult, and its clearest manifestations
occur among artifacts of the Paracas and Nasca cultures of south
coastal Peru, from about 300 B.C. to A.D. 400. Large numbers of
FIG. 7.-This is the largest golden mummy mask of Chim6 origin extant, measuring
29 inches wide by 16 inches high. Originally some of its surfaces were painted with red
cinnabar, traces of which remain, and the holes in the eyes, the ears and earspools, and
along the bottom edge of the mask indicate that other decorations-such as plaques of
copper, precious stones, or fibers-were attached when the mummy bundle was in-
terred. In spite of its lushly golden color, the mask is not made of gold but of a ternary
copper-silver-gold alloy (12 percent Cu, 49 percent Ag, 39 percent Au). Once ham-
mered to shape, the surfaces of the mask were treated chemically to enrich them in gold
through processes known as depletion gilding. (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York, Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A.
Rockefeller, 1979.)

extremely rich graves have been excavated at the south coast site of
Paracas. The mummy bundles, not all of which have been un-
wrapped, have yielded some of the finest cloth preserved from the
prehistoric New World. Characteristic of these textiles are large,
magnificent embroidered mantles that formed part of the mummy
wrappings of high-status individuals of Paracas. A particularly fine
mantle in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston dis-
plays, in many-colored embroidery, masked and costumed cult
figures in the form of birds, each holding a trophy head in one hand,
two heads displayed on its chest, and two on its wings (fig. 8). The Ica
River valley on the south Peruvian coast, not far from Paracas and
Nasca, has yielded pairs of miniature gold trophy heads-each only 1
or 2 centimeters in height-that probably belong to a somewhat later
Nasca version of related cult practice. They are compelling "charms";
their monumentality, despite their small size, is extraordinary (fig. 9).
*e *e *
FIG. 8.-Detail of a figure, executed in wool embroidery, on a Paracas mantle that

formed one of the wrappings of a mummy bundle interred on the south coast of Peru
in the period roughly between 400 and 200 B.c. The figure wears face paint and a gold
diadem. It holds a trophy head in its left hand; two others are displayed on its shirt and
two on its wings. (Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ross Collection.)

14 Heather Lechtman
All of the metal objects from the Andes described and illustrated
here as symbols of rank, power, and religious force are made of
gold, silver, or a combination of those metals. Indeed, gold and silver
had special ritual and political significance throughout Andean pre-
history from their first important use as carriers of religious icono-
graphic motifs associated with the Chavin cult that swept through the
central Andes about 1000 B.c. up until their employment by the Inca
royal dynasty as symbols of political power used solely by the em-
peror. All the vast mineral wealth of the Andean empire belonged to
the Inca, and among the metals he controlled, gold and silver played a
prominent role. They were his birthright, for the Inca dynasty began
with the offspring of the sun and the moon. The first Inca was the son
of the sun. In Inca cosmology, gold represented the sweat of the sun,
silver the tears of the moon. Thus these two metals were intimately
associated with the origin myth of the ruling dynasty and were second
only to cloth as visible indexes of its wealth and power. Everyone is
familiar with the stories recounted by invading Spaniards of Inca
palaces whose walls were covered with sheets of silver and gold, with
special rooms of miniature gardens that sprouted golden plants
through whose leaves flew gold and silver birds. Of course, little of
this wealth remains, for it was converted to bullion in the European
melting pot.
Nevertheless, we do have a sufficient number of objects from all of
the major periods of Andean prehistory to indicate a trend in Andean
metallurgy that persisted throughout its development. That trend was
motivated by a strong and consistent interest in the colors and quality
I M: ^^^'sgip^ o y :I
FI(;. 9.-A pair of hollow gold trophy heads of Nasca style, slightly less than 2
centimeters high, from a grave in the Ica Valley on the Peruvian south coast. Each head
is composed of nineteen individual pieces of sheet gold, hammered to shape and
soldered together to produce the final form. These are metallurgical as well as aesthetic
tours de force, despite their small size. They are currently in a private collection in the
United States.

of metallic gold and silver. It was important that metal objects have
the appearance of gold and silver-their colors and their
reflectivity-even if they incorporated very little of these precious
metals in their structure. In fact, a large proportion of the gold- and
silver-looking objects we have from the Andes are not made of the
pure metals. Many-such as the mummy mask (fig. 7) and the eagle
earspool (fig. 5)-contain relatively small amounts of gold or of silver.
The social arena in which metallurgy received its greatest stimulus
in the Andes was the arena dominated by status and political display.
An underlying cultural value system that appears to have strongly
influenced the visual manifestation of status and power was a color
symbolism oriented around the colors of silver and of gold. The most
innovative and interesting aspects of Andean metallurgy arose from
attempts by Andean metalsmiths to produce metallic gold and metal-
lic silver surfaces on metal objects that were made of neither metal.
These efforts resulted in the purposeful manufacture of binary and
ternary alloys of copper, silver, and gold, and in a remarkable set of
metallurgical and electrochemical procedures for gilding and silver-
ing objects made of copper.
On the basis of the relatively small remaining corpus of metal ob-
jects of pre-Columbian date assigned to the Mochica culture, it has
often been claimed, and rightly so, that the Moche peoples were
among the most sophisticated of Andean metalworkers and that their
products in metal were unequaled by those of the cultures that suc-
ceeded them, including the Inca. The discovery in the late 1960s of a
large group of metal objects of Mochica style in the far north of Peru,
at a site called Loma Negra near the Ecuadorean border, was of great
importance, for it added substantially to the number of known objects
either made or profoundly influenced by the Moche craftsmen.10 The
majority of these objects are made of hammered sheet copper, indi-
vidual, shaped pieces of which were often joined to produce a three-
dimensional form (fig. 10). These artifacts are entirely covered with
green corrosion products of copper that formed during burial, but
originally their outside surfaces-and occasionally their inside sur-
faces also-were covered with extremely thin coatings of gold or
silver. Such gilt or silvered surfaces can occasionally be seen when the
green mineral layers are removed, revealing surface plating beneath.
Thus, in their original condition, the objects appeared to be made of
gold or silver.
10A more detailed discussion of Mochica metallurgy as practiced at Loma Negra can
be found in Heather Lechtman, "A Pre-Columbian Technique for Electrochemical
Replacement Plating of Gold and Silver on Objects of Copper," Journal of Metals 31
(December 1979): 154-60, and in Lechtman et al.

16 Heather Lechtman
Studies of the gold and silver surface coatings on the Loma Negra
objects, carried out at MIT's Laboratory for Research on Ar-
chaeological Materials, proved difficult. The coatings are so thin,
measuring 0.5-2 microns, that they often were not visible in cross sec-
tion at a magnification of 500. After many metallographic examina-
tions of small samples removed from the objects, we came to three con-
clusions: (1) that the metal coatings on any one object are of a rela-
tively uniform thickness and cover all surfaces, including the often
paper-thin edges of the object; (2) that there is a solid-state diffusion
zone between the gold and the copper indicating that, at some stage of
the coating process, heat was applied; and (3) that there is no evidence
of mercury gilding, the use of gold leaf or foil, or the flushing-on of
molten gold on any of the objects.
The most impressive characteristic of these coatings is their ex-
treme thinness and evenness. They look, indeed, very much like
modern electrodeposits, which they could not possibly be. However,
all of the features of the coatings could have been the result of some
form of electrochemical replacement. After our experiments con-
vinced us that the Loma Negra objects were not gilt by immersion in a
bath of molten gold or gilt through any sweat welding or Sheffield
a_ a
FIG. 10.-Seated figure from the site of Loma Negra, on the Peruvian north coast.
The three-dimensional form is constructed from many pieces of sheet copper, ham-
mered to shape and joined mechanically by a tab-and-slot system. Each preshaped piece
of copper was gilt by electrochemical replacement plating of gold onto the copper
before the figure was assembled. Although the object is almost entirely covered with
green corrosion products that formed during burial, here and there the gold surface
coating can be seen where the corrosion has worn thin. The earspools are decorated
with pieces of shell. (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Michael
C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979.)

plating type of process, and after mercury gilding was definitely ruled
out, we attempted to reproduce the gross characteristics and the
microstructures of these coatings using systems of electrochemical
deposition that might have been available to ancient Andean metal-
workers-that is, to deposit gold or silver onto copper without the use
of modern chemicals, such as cyanide or aqua regia for dissolving the
gold, and without the use of an external source of current.
We have been successful in dissolving gold and silver in mixtures of
corrosive minerals which were available to Andean metalworkers and
which our earlier studies had shown were frequently used by them.
The simplest and most effective method we have used for putting
gold into solution consists of heating it gently for two to five days in an
aqueous solution of equal parts of common salt (NaCI), potassium
nitrate (KN03), and potassium aluminum sulfate (KAl[S04]2-
12H20). This solution contains inter alia the same ions as are present
in aqua regia to dissolve the gold in the form of trivalent ions.
Chloroauric acid, H(AuC14) ? 3H20, would crystallize from the solu-
tion.
The resulting gold solution is highly acidic and immediately attacks
copper dipped into it, causing a layer of copper corrosion products to
form on the surface of the metal. It was thus necessary to neutralize
the gold solution before introducing the copper. Among various salts
that can be used for this purpose, we found sodium bicarbonate most
effective. The optimum conditions for the gold in solution to plate
onto the copper surface occur at a pH of 9. Copper sheet dipped into
such a solution will be uniformly coated on all its surfaces (including
the edges) with a film of gold approximately 1 micron thick after five
minutes of gentle boiling.
We found that depositing a thin film of gold onto a copper sub-
strate by simple electrochemical plating was only occasionally suf-
ficient to bond the gold permanently to the copper. A more durable
bond could be effected, however, by heating the gilt copper at a
temperature high enough to produce solid-state diffusion of the gold
and copper across their common interface. We proceeded to heat our
gilt metal at temperatures ranging from about 500? C to 800? C for
various periods of time. In the higher temperature ranges, excellent
bonding occurred after only seconds of heating.
Most of the gold that has been analyzed from objects made on the
north coast of what is today Peru, as well as native gold panned re-
cently from rivers in that area, contains silver in amounts that range
from a few percent to as much as about 15 percent by weight. We
decided, therefore, to see if we could plate copper with alloys of gold
and silver stemming from an aqueous salt solution containing various

18 Heather Lechtman
proportions of those two metals. We used copper pennies and suc-

cessfully plated them by dipping them into a series of hot solutions/
suspensions of silver and gold containing gold in concentrations of
100-5 percent by weight. We have not analyzed the actual plate to
determine the silver:gold ratio on the surface of each penny, but it is
clear that both gold and silver are deposited simultaneously and that
the final color of the plate, which varies markedly from coin to coin,
depends on the relative amounts of silver and gold in suspension and
in solution at the moment of contact with the copper.
Ultimately, we were successful in achieving plates that were quite
close in their visual characteristics and in their microstructures to the
platings on the Loma Negra objects. The microstructures (fig. 11) are
typified by large, annealed grains within the copper sheet and, at the
surface of the sheet, by heat-induced solid-state diffusion of the
plated coating along the grain boundaries. Our copper sheet, plated
by immersion with an 85 gold:15 silver coating, then annealed in a
FIG;.11.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section cut through one surface of a

tiny sample removed from beneath the base of the seated figure from Loma Negra (fig.
10). The metallic structures are shown at a magnification of 500. The annealed grains
within the hammered copper sheet are large, and extensive corrosion has occurred
along grain boundaries. The sheet also contains some spherical oxide inclusions. At the
surface of the copper sheet, the electrochemically deposited gold layer is just visible.
Annealing of the gilt sheet stimulated solid state diffusion to occur between the copper
and the gold. That diffusion proceeded preferentially along grain boundaries and is
recognizable in the photomicrograph as small dips or inverted peaks in the gold layer
where the gold has entered along a grain boundary.

Bunsen flame for fifteen seconds, closely reproduced the Loma Negra
microstructures and formed a well-bonded golden surface (fig. 12).
The dissolution of gold in aqueous solutions of corrosive salts is not
a modern technique by any means. In fact, the gilding of iron and
steel armor was achieved by such methods in 18th-century Europe
and probably far earlier, as described by Godfrey Smith in his London
edition of The Laboratoryor School of Arts (1720). In these procedures,
however, the original, aqueous gold solution was not used directly but
was heated to dryness, and the resulting gold chloride (AuCl3) dis-
solved from the complex mixture of salts by extraction with alcohol. It
is the alcoholic solution that has traditionally been used to plate cop-
per, iron, or steel with gold. By the 19th century, ether had replaced
the alcohol for extraction.
Our method is much more direct. Through the simple expedient of
neutralizing the aqueous gold solution with a common alkali such as
sodium carbonate or bicarbonate or calcium carbonate, we can use the
original solution, and no further extractions are required. Some such
straightforward procedure is what we suspect the Andean metal-
workers employed. Our previous studies had already demonstrated
FIG. 12.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section through a piece of hammered

sheet copper, gilt in the laboratory by immersion into an aqueous salt solution/
suspension of 85 percent gold:15 percent silver. After electrochemical replacement
plating, the sheet was flame annealed for fifteen seconds. The magnification of this
photomicrograph is 1,000. The structures produced in the laboratory are almost iden-
tical with those in the metal sample removed from the Loma Negra seated figure (fig.
11): large, annealed copper grains; spherical oxide inclusions; a thin gold-silver surface
plate which has penetrated the copper along grain boundaries through solid-state
diffusion.

20 Heather Lechtman
the probable use by these smiths of aqueous solutions of salt and niter
or salt and ferric sulfate to gild objects by surface depletion
methods.11 Such corrosive minerals were available to them and ap-
parently were in common use.
When considering the plating mechanisms by which these in-
credibly thin and uniform layers of gold and silver were produced in
the Andes, we recognize two categories of electrochemical plating
without the use of an external battery or other source of electric
current: "electroless" plating and "electrochemical replacement." In
electroless plating, the solution itself contains its own reductant, and it
will deposit metal on any surface that will catalyze the necessary elec-
tron exchange. In electroless plating, therefore, there is no chemical
reaction with the basis metal-in our case, with the copper sheet.
By contrast, plating by electrochemical replacement occurs when a
metal such as copper, high in the electromotive series (at the "nega-
tive" or "base" end of the series), is placed in an electrolyte containing
ions of a metal, such as gold, lower in the series (at the "positive" or
"noble" end). Chemically, a simple replacement reaction occurs, such
as 2AuCl3 + 3Cu -> 2Au + 3CuCl2. But such an equation does not
reveal the mechanism, which is identical with that in the simple cells
used by the first electroplaters. It is necessary to have anode and
cathode areas, both of which have to be in contact with an electrolyte,
and a complete circuit for electrons to flow from the anode through
the metal to the cathode area, balanced by the return flow of ions
through the electrolyte. Unless the geometry is such that anode areas
are continually in contact with the electrolyte, there will be only an
infinitesimal deposit before the electrode potential is everywhere the
same and the action stops.
In replacement plating, different parts of the same metal surface
provide both the anode and the cathode. In our case, as in the case of
the Loma Negra objects, we assume that small pits or irregularities on
the surface of the copper sheet (fig. 13) initially act as anodes and
continue their anodic activity until they are completely blocked or
protected from the electrolyte by the deposit-the gold-which plates
onto adjacent cathodic surfaces. The anodic and cathodic areas will be
in delicate balance, depending on the details of ion availability and
polarization. A good deposit occurs only when the anode areas shrink
to the point of near invisibility, but they must not become completely
sealed off from the electrolyte. Plating formed by replacement mech-
" Heather Lechtman, "The Gilding of Metals in Pre-Columbian Peru," in Application

of Sciencein Examinationof Worksof Art, ed. William J. Young (Boston, 1973), pp. 38-52.

anisms should therefore be characterized by small anodic areas sur-
rounded by much larger cathodic ones. Such an anodic pit can be seen
in the photomicrograph in figure 11, a section through a sample of
gilt metal removed from the Loma Negra artifact in the form of a
seated man. These small pits, passing through and lying beneath the
gold, are anodic spots that have dissolved to drive the deposition of
gold onto adjacent smooth and uninterrupted cathodic areas.
Mochica metalsmiths were not limited solely to gilding and silvering
objects made of copper. Their desire to achieve culturally valued
color effects was played out in the alloy systems they developed or
invented, some of which have come to be considered the hallmark of
Andean prehistoric metallurgy.
The alloy systems developed during the Early Intermediate Period
are extremely important, for they continued to be used in later
periods, and some of them dominated the Andean metallurgical
scene up to the time of the Spanish invasion.12 The earliest of these
that has been identified archaeologically is the alloy of copper and
silver which the Mochica used over a wide range of silver concentra-
tion, from a few percent to over 30 percent, by weight, of silver. The
alloy became particularly popular both on the north coast, within
FI;. 13.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section through one surface of a

fragmentremoved from a gilt copper objectfrom the site of Loma Negra. The original
gold plate was removed and the sample replated in the laboratoryby electrochemical
replacement.The surface anodic pores are partiallycovered by the electrochemically
deposited gold-silverplate. This photograph was taken at a magnificationof 500.
12Completetechnicaldescriptionsof copper-silverand copper-silver-goldalloys and

depletion gilding methods used by pre-Columbian metalsmiths can be found in
Heather Lechtman,"The Gilding of Metalsin Pre-ColumbianPeru."

22 Heather Lechtman
Chimu territory, and on the south coast, where it was used extensively
by Chincha metalworkers during the Late Intermediate Period.
Copper-silver alloys have two properties that were important for
Andean craftsmen: their toughness when hammered and their de-
velopment of enriched silver surfaces when hammered and annealed.
These alloys were used almost exclusively for the manufacture of
objects made of sheet metal. Even with silver concentrations as low as
about 5 percent by weight, the metal becomes hard but not brittle
when hammered into thin sheet. The flexibility and toughness of
copper-silver sheet metal allowed it to be shaped easily and, once
formed, to retain its shape with far greater strength than pure silver
or even sterling silver (7.5 percent copper). It was thus an excellent
material for metalworkers whose forte was the production of items
from elaborately hammered and joined pieces of metal sheet, objects
such as those illustrated in figures 5, 6, 9, and 10.
The surface-enrichment properties of copper-silver alloys are well
understood. Particularly for alloys containing about 10 percent or
more of silver by weight, the repeated sequences of hammering, an-
nealing, and removing the surface copper oxide scale formed on
annealing-sequences necessary to the fabrication of sheet metal
from the alloy ingot-produce enriched silver surfaces on the result-
ing sheet as the surface copper is removed. Thus metal made from
such alloys, of mottled copper color when cast, is bright silver in color
after having been hammered into sheet. The formation of silvered
surfaces on objects hammered from these alloys is an inescapable
consequence of annealing and of the attendant loss of surface copper
through oxidation. There is, essentially, no way of preventing it.
Copper-silver alloys were used by the Mochica to produce objects of
sheet metal because the sheet was hard and tough and because objects
made of such sheet looked like silver. In later periods, these alloys
continued to be used for the same reasons, and the well-known vasos
retratos,or effigy beakers, of Chimu and Chincha origin, said to be of
silver, are sometimes made of copper-silver alloy.
By far the most important alloy system developed during the Early
Intermediate Period and often used by the Mochica in the manufac-
ture of sheet metal objects was that of copper-gold. Copper and gold
when melted together form a complete solid solution series through-
out the entire range of possible alloy compositions, and objects vary-
ing widely in composition have been encountered. Silver is also often
found in these Andean alloys either because the gold used contained
some silver, as placer gold from the Andes often does, or because gold
was added to a copper-silver alloy. For example, an ingot of Mochica
origin, excavated by Max Uhle in the Moche Valley and analyzed by

Clair Patterson, contains 60 percent copper, 31 percent gold, and 10
percent silver. By contrast, Alfred Kroeber reports the compositions
of several pieces of Mochica "sheet gold," also excavated by Uhle, as
containing, in one case, 68 percent gold, 13 percent copper, 19 per-
cent silver; and in another, 67 percent gold, 11 percent copper, 22
percent silver by weight.13 Copper-gold alloys such as these are often
referred to in the literature of the New World as tumbaga,a term more
often associated with the metal as it came to be used by the peoples of
Colombia in the remarkable lost-wax castings they made from it. The
Mochica ingot analyzed by Patterson is a copper-rich tumbaga. The
alloys described by Kroeber may be considered gold-rich tumbagas
with a high concentration of silver. In fact, such metal is equivalent to
16-karat gold.
Copper-gold alloys, like copper-silver alloys, become hard on
hammering but retain their flexibility. They were, therefore, perfectly
suited to the sheet metal tradition already characteristic of north
Peruvian metalworking. But these alloys were used and subsequently
highly developed primarily for another property-the gold color that
they confer on articles made from them once the surfaces of such
objects are suitably treated. For example, the Mochica ingot contain-
ing 60 percent copper and 31 percent gold is not golden but distinctly
copper in color in its cast condition. As in the case of the copper-silver
alloys, when such an ingot is hammered to produce thin metal sheet,
copper is lost from the surfaces of the alloy through oxidation on
annealing. Objects made from copper-rich tumbagasof this type soon
develop deep golden surfaces as increasing amounts of surface cop-
per are lost in the hammering and annealing process. When silver is
also present, the surfaces of the object may require additional chemi-
cal treatment to remove some of the silver as well, thereby enriching
the gold. We now know, in fact, that Andean metalworkers were
capable of dissolving silver from such enriched gold-silver surface
alloys with naturally occurring acid minerals, a highly sophisticated
chemical process. Evidently this discovery had already been made by
the Mochica, though it was most widely adopted by the Chimu who,
several centuries later, dominated the entire north coast of Peru.
There is no question but that Chim6 metallurgy was a continuation
of and highly dependent on that of their predecessors, the Mochica.
Chim6 metalsmiths took advantage of Mochica know-how but used it
in a slightly different way. Many of the large and lushly golden
'3Clair C. Patterson, "Native Copper, Silver, and Gold Accessible to Early Metal-
lurgists," AmericanAntiquity36 (July 1971): 286-321; A. L. Kroeber, Peruvian Archeology
in 1942 (New York, 1944).

24 Heather Lechtman
mummy masks from Peru familiar to museum goers are of Chimu

origin. The largest known example of these, presently in the collec-
tion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, measures
29 inches wide by 16 inches high (fig. 7). Its golden surface is dazzling,
yet the mask is made of a ternary alloy containing only 39 percent
gold, the remainder being silver (49 percent) and copper (12 percent).
Other smaller and less imposing sheet metal ornaments of Chimu
manufacture, all of which are golden in color, are similarly made of
ternary alloys which usually contain about 60-70 percent copper,
between 12 and 30 percent silver, and from 10 to 15 percent gold.
Such alloys, when cast, are light to deep pink in color, depending on
the amount of copper and silver they contain. They are definitely not
golden. When we removed a tiny fragment of metal from a broken
edge of the Metropolitan's mummy mask, metallographic and elec-
tron probe microscopic examinations of the sample in cross section
revealed some of the mechanisms by which the mask's golden surface
had been achieved.
Etched cross sections of the mask fragment show the striated ap-
pearance characteristic of heavily worked sheet metal, the thin bands
of alternating metal phases elongated in the direction of working (fig.
14). Both surfaces of the section, corresponding to the front and back
of the mask, are considerably whiter than the bulk of the metal sheet,
which appears gray in the photomicrograph and pink when viewed in
reflected light. These white surface regions constitute zones of surface
enrichment in silver and in gold. Electron microbeam probe traces
taken as the sample was moved under the electron beam show the
Fi(;. 14.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section of a tiny fragment of metal

removed from a broken edge of the Chim6 mummy mask now in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 7). The structure is typical of severely worked metal,
with tiny grains and alternating phases of the ternary alloy strung out in the direction of
working. The white zones at both surfaces represent regions of surface enrichment in
silver and gold resulting fiom depletion of the surfaces in copper. The structures are
shown at a magnification of 200.

relative concentrations of copper, silver, and gold in the alloy, begin-
ning at a point at the center of the section and moving out through
one of the enriched surfaces (fig. 15a, b). The probe concentration
curves demonstrate that the metal sheet of which the mask is made is a
ternary alloy of copper, silver, and gold. Furthermore, they indicate
that as one approaches the surface zone of the sheet-within about
8-10 microns of the visible surface-the copper in the alloy is com-
pletely missing, leaving a gold-silver binary alloy near the surface.
This enriched gold-silver alloy looks decidedly white in the metallo-
graphic section when viewed with reflected light. Proceeding toward
the ultimate visible surface, we find that most of the silver has been
removed also, leaving a thin skin of almost pure gold at the visible
surface of the mask. It is this thin skin, only a few microns thick, that
gives the mask its bright, golden appearance.
As in the case of binary silver-copper alloys, when ingots of the
ternary copper-silver-gold alloy are forged into metal sheet, a point is
reached when continued hammering to reduce the thickness of the
MIT 356.
MIT 352
FS.
Au 100%
Ag 100%
FS Cu 80%
"
. ?. *j Au 100%
JC;-X ; . 'Ag 100%
:- ':I Cu 20% - 6
. u /
_:j~A Cu,
'
Au,
I
Ii
: 1
a b
Fi(;. 15.-Two sets of concentration profiles of the alloying elements within samples
removed from depletion gilt Chimu mummy masks. a, MIT 352 is the large mask
illustrated in fig. 7 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. b, MIT 356 is a similar but
smaller mask. The curves represent relative concentrations, not absolute concentra-
tions, of copper, silver, and gold within each sample obtained by electron microanalysis
as the sample was moved under the electron beam. The beam made a continuous
traverse across the cross section, from a point near its center out through one gilt
surface. The depletion first of copper, then of silver as one approaches the surface is
evident as is the enrichment of gold at the visible surface. The relative drop in copper
and silver concentration and attendant rise in gold is particularly dramatic in the
sample from the smaller mask (fig. 15b).

26 Heather Lechtman
ingot causes the metal to become brittle with the possibility of fracture
if the hammering proceeds too far (fig. 16). When the metal reaches
this stage, the smith anneals it. The heavily worked metal grains re-
crystallize and regain their ability to be plastically deformed. Ham-
mering can then proceed until, once again, the metal becomes highly
stressed and brittle. Annealing serves to relax the crystalline structure
so that forging can proceed. At each anneal, however, some of the
copper atoms in the near vicinity of the metal surface move to the
surface under the action of the heat and oxidize there, forming a
// // rl
Cl&0
Co01<1 -
// / // //
-- ---- co @tL C.AO
i+A:Aw
Cw a *.^ cg + A'
/ / / // ., /// / / /
Cu.4A^JJA?.
'?---- / /) /
// /
Aai?i~iii;?;liAi +A%.
containing Cu, Ag, and Au, is cold woked (hammeed at oom tempeatue)
ingot, to
-ERV, YiN PE..E'~
o IL~IN G
Fi(.. 16.-Diagiram of the mechanisms by which Andean metalworker-s depletion gilt

slheet metal objects torged firom ingots made of copper-silver-gold alloys. Stage I, The
in
-efteted
i-educe lightt. and annealed.At each anneal, a scaleof copper oxide (Cu20) forms
itsthickness
on the sur-face.This is pickledoff, and the forigingcontinues. Afteri many sequencesof
hammer-ing,annealing, and pickling, the thin sheet has lost sufficient copper at its

brown to black scale that covers the surface. This scale must be re-
moved before hammering can continue. Andean smiths could have
used certain acid plant juices or stale urine to pickle off the copper
oxide scale quite easily. After many sequences of hammering, an-
nealing, and pickling, the resulting thin metal sheet will have lost so
much surface copper that the surface becomes effectively enriched in
silver and gold through copper depletion. A mummy mask at this
stage of manufacture would appear as if made of silver, since the
binary silver-gold alloy remaining at the surface is silvery white in
color.
But the mummy masks are brightly golden. Chimii smiths, ap-
proaching the task of gilding from the same point of view as that of
silvering, were faced with the problem of removing the silver in the
V~+A~ e~4,Au- <
AA
>Q(;.RUIrN "?
4AL'TIo
A QIL)IN G
''TA C 2
FIG. 16.-Stage 2, To remove silver from the surface of the metal sheet, the object is
covered completely with an aqueous paste of ferric sulfate and salt. This corrosive
material dissolves the silver from the surface binary alloy of silver and gold, leaving a
thin skin of gold in place. The object is left with a three-layered structure: an inner core
of ternary copper-silver-gold alloy, a surface zone of binary silver-gold alloy, and a
visible surface skin of gold.

28 Heather Lechtman
surface silver-gold binary alloy in order to leave only the gold in situ.
A modern chemist might use various cyanide solutions or distilled
nitric acid to part silver from gold, but we can assume that such
distilled acids were not available to Andean smiths. What they did
have at hand and apparently used, however, were combinations of
naturally occurring acid minerals-such as ferric sulfate and
sodium chloride (common table salt)-which, in an aqueous environ-
ment, effectively remove silver from a silver-gold alloy, leaving the
gold in place.
This set of procedures-which removes first copper, then silver
from the surface of a ternary alloy containing copper, silver, and gold,
thereby gilding the surface-is known as depletion gilding and ac-
counts for the configuration of the electron microprobe concentration
profiles of the cross section removed from the Metropolitan's mummy
mask. We cast an ingot with precisely the same ternary composition as
the Metropolitan's mask and hammered it into thin sheet through
many rounds of annealing and pickling. When we were through, our
sheet looked like silver. We covered the sheet with aqueous pastes of
ferric sulfate and salt or ferric sulfate, salt, and iron oxide. These
were allowed to remain at room temperature for two days, when they
were removed and washed. The resulting sheet had a reddish-brown
color, the color of parted gold in finely divided, particulate form. But
when burnished or gently heated at about 300? C for half an hour, the
gold immediately became a rich, smooth, and shiny yellow color.
Nothing could be simpler!
Ferric sulfate is a highly corrosive substance, acting in solution
almost as a mixture of ferrous sulfate and sulfuric acid. Both copper
and silver are dissolved by it, the reaction (ignoring the detailed elec-
trochemistry of the ions) being Cu + Fe2+++ (S4--)3 -> Cu++S04-- +
2Fe++SO4--. A similar reaction occurs with silver. The presence of
Cl- ions from the salt addition would accelerate the reaction and
perhaps externally precipitate relatively insoluble AgCl. The action
ceases when all the Fe+++ ions have been reduced, though it would
continue through atmospheric oxidation. But more than electro-
chemistry is involved: physically the residual gold is left in situ in a
submicroscopically porous state that is easily made coherent by bur-
nishing or heating.
Depletion gilding, which relies on the removal from the surface of
an alloy of its baser metal constituents in order to leave the noblest
metal in place, was used effectively by the Chimd to gild sheet metal
objects that contained as little as 12 percent gold by weight, the
remainder of the alloy being principally copper with some silver.
The tumbaga alloys with their inherent gold enrichment properties

swept through the Americas from Peru to Mexico and were in com-
mon use in that entire region when the Spaniards invaded Central
and South America in the 16th century. They constitute the most
significant contribution of the New World to the repertoire of alloy
systems developed among ancient societies. In the Central Andes,
copper-rich tumbagas continued to be used after the Early Inter-
mediate Period primarily to produce gold-colored objects of sheet
metal in contrast to their use in Colombia, the Isthmian area, and
Mexico, where they were employed primarily in castings.
* * *
There has been considerable discussion about why tumbaga had the
impact it had, why it spread so far and overcame the particular
metalworking traditions of the various cultures that adopted it (e.g.,
the almost diametrically opposed traditions of Peruvian and Colom-
bian artisans, the former exquisite forgers of metal, the latter superb
founders), each tailoring the concept of depletion and enrichment to
its own techniques.14 Explanations have invoked the economy of the
system-that is, one can spread one's gold much farther if objects are
made of tumbaga rather than of pure gold. But if one argues for the
economizing of gold, one has also to bear in mind that in alloys of
tumbaga all the gold inside the alloy is "wasted." Only that at the
surface is functional in the sense that it is visible. Using gold leaf or
other external plating systems would be much more economical. In
fact, metal objects were gilt with gold foil, and William Root examined
a number of objects made of copper-gold tumbaga from Cocle, in
Panama, and from Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Yucatan in which the
gilding was achieved by applying the foil to the surfaces of the tumbaga
castings!15 Clearly in these cases the gold within the alloy was present
for a purpose entirely different from any possible gilding function.
The ternary copper-silver-gold tumbagas were also used, at least in
parts of Colombia, in the manufacture of tools such as awls and axes
which were cast and selectively work hardened to rival the best Inca
products in copper-tin bronze. Thus it was a serviceable alloy for tool
14I have expressed many of the views argued here in previous publications: Heather
Lechtman, "Style in Technology-Some Early Thoughts," in Material Culture: Styles,
Organization, and Dynamics of Technology,ed. Heather Lechtman and Robert S. Merrill
(St. Paul, 1977), pp. 3-20; "Issues in Andean Metallurgy," in Pre-ColumbianMetallurgyof
South America, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C., 1979), pp. 1-40; and "The
Central Andes-Metallurgy without Iron," in Wertime and Muhly, eds. (n. 1 above),
pp. 267-334.
'5William C. Root, "Gold-Copper Alloys in Ancient America," Journal of Chemical
Education 28 (February 1951): 76-78.

30 Heather Lechtman
production, though it was used much less frequently for making tools
than for almost every other variety of object produced by the
Colombians-nose rings, tunjos, vessels, ornaments, and so forth. Root
argued that although tumbaga might have been used because it made
casting easier, it made objects harder, and it made a small amount of
gold go farther, the most likely reason for its employ was that the
people who made and used it preferred the color of gold to that of
copper-or, to put it another way, they liked the color of tumbaga
more than that of gold or of copper.
While all these explanations certainly enter into the constellation of
tumbaga, there is another consideration that lies more in the realm of
attitudes: attitudes of artisans toward the materials they used and
attitudes of a culture area toward the nature of the technological
events themselves. We are really seeking explanations, not for the use
of the particular copper-gold alloy called tumbaga, but for the de-
velopment, geographical spread, and persistence for over two millen-
nia of systems of surface enrichment that stimulated the invention of
a variety of alloys and that were adaptive to quite disparate traditions
of handling metals.
The basis of Andean enrichment systems is the incorporation of the
essential ingredient-the gold or the silver-into the very body of the
object. The essence of the object, that which appears superficially to
be true of it, must also be inside it. In fact, the object is not that object
unless it contains within it the essential quality, even if the essence is
only minimally present. For, without the incorporation of the essence,
its visual manifestation is impossible. Although these enrichment
systems-whether of silver or gold-have been used by metalworkers
in other areas of the world, the role they played in the Andes is
unique. Almost from the earliest appearance of metallurgy there,
depletion and enrichment processes assumed a special place that per-
sisted throughout the entire course of Andean metallurgical develop-
ment and were responsible for stimulating some of its most interesting
achievements. Although ideological considerations may have had lit-
tle to do with the initial working out of these procedures, it seems
certain that the way in which Andean peoples perceived such
processes-or at least the objects that resulted from their use-had a
great deal to do with the way in which the technology emerged and
matured. Belief systems and attitudes toward materials supported the
technology and gave rise to further developments along similar lines.
On another occasion, I suggested that one of the ways to test the
hypothesis concerning incorporation of essences as an ideological
motif underlying the elaboration of Andean metal gilding tech-
nologies and its possible, more widespread occurrence behind a style

of technological behavior within Andean society would be to examine
those technologies that surround what is unequivocally the most im-
portant arena of Andean material culture-cloth production.16 Do
similar concerns appear to have operated in the elaborate weaving
techniques utilized by Andean specialists in the prehistoric period?
No other item of manufacture in the Andes assumed the im-
portance of cloth. By the Incaic period, cloth and agriculture were
considered the dual forms of wealth,17 and textile manufacture had
behind it some 4,000 years of development. In Andean society, cloth
performed in virtually all aspects of life-it had religious and cere-
monial functions, political and military functions; it was the commod-
ity that carried with it the highest status and, for the Inca, was the item
most valued by the state and the individual alike. Textiles were the
primary visual medium for the expression of ideas, the fundamental
art form of Andean peoples. And the manipulation of fibers-
whether for the thatching of roofs, the building of bridges, or the
weaving of garments-formed one of the primary systems of Andean
technology.
Although from quite early periods of Andean prehistory it is clear
that groups of specialists were involved in the production of elite
textiles, it is equally evident that virtually everyone of all ages spun
and all women and some men wove. The technology was a pervasive,
a universal, element of Andean life, and this intense involvement, in
conjunction with the social-ideational significance of cloth, gave rise to
the elaboration of an extremely wide range of highly sophisticated
weaving techniques. All scholars agree that Andean textiles rank
among the finest of preindustrial cloth manufactures.
One of the most impressive aspects of Andean weaving arises from
the preponderant use of "structural" as opposed to "suprastructural"
techniques for realizing the patterns carried by the finished, woven
cloth.l8 When a design or pattern is achieved through suprastructural
means, the design is added to a completed web. Its removal from that
web would in no way affect the integrity of the woven cloth which acts
as a support for the design but is otherwise structurally unaffected by
it. Embroidered designs fall in this category, as do brocading and
painted cloth; dyed textiles, achieved by tie-dyeing or, in a sense, ikat,
are also included in this group. Such techniques were used by Andean
weavers, particularly by societies that developed along the Pacific
coast of South America. In contrast, designs achieved by structural
16Lechtman, "Style in Technology-Some Early Thoughts."
17Murra (n. 7 above).
"'Definitions and discussion of these technical weaving terms can be found in Irene
Emery, The Primary Structuresof Fabrics (Washington, D.C., 1966).

32 Heather Lechtman
means are realized through the manipulation of warp and weft yarns
during the process of weaving so that the design emerges from the
structural rendering of the web. To remove the design would be to
destroy-literally to unweave-the cloth. Tapestry techniques; dou-
ble, triple, quadruple cloth; gauze weaves; and warp patterned weaves
as well as plain weaves are only some of the Andean cloth types whose
characteristics are achieved through manipulation of the structural
elements of the fabric. There is no question but the primary creative
direction of Andean weaving-both synchronic (area to area) and
diachronic (over time)-lay in the rich elaboration of structural tech-
niques, in the playing out of a structural technological style. As Anna
Gayton observed when discussing ancient Peruvian textiles, "This
potency of structure, sufficient to enhance or mar the qualities of
yarns, colors, and designs, was a major motivation for developing the
different methods of interlacing warps and wefts which distinguish
one weaving technique from another."19
When we compare Andean weaving with any of the other great
traditions of cloth manufacture, whether Oriental or European, no-
where else do we find such an elaboration of and commitment to a
broad range of weaving techniques based on loom yarn manipulation.
It is not simply that Andean cloth production greatly emphasized and
relied on patterns structurally rendered but that the complexity of
such structural manipulations-as in quadruple cloth-went far be-
yond mere virtuosity. William Conklin argues persuasively that the
reason behind such a rich field of structural invention in Andean
weaving lies in the role of textiles as the chief carrier of cultural
message in conjunction with the availability of the technology at all
levels of the society.
What we must ask is whether the visual message carried by Andean
cloth, to the extent that that message was borne by the design motifs,
had to be contained in and to be generated by the very structure of
the fabric itself. That is, just as in the case of the depletion gilding of
metal, does there come a point at which the technology per se be-
comes the medium for the expression of message? In the case of
Andean highland weaving, intricate manipulations of many warp
planes and myriad weft yarns were, strictly speaking, unnecessary to
the accomplishment of the designs. Simpler techniques could have
achieved the same patterns. But Andean weaving seems to have re-
sponded to notions that saw the achievement of visual, surface mes-
'9Anna H. Gayton, "The Cultural Significance of Peruvian Textiles: Production,

Function, Aesthetics," KroeberAnthropologicalSocietyPapers 25 (1961): 111-28; quotation
on p. 117.

sage as emerging from underlying, invisible structural relations. An-

dean weaving insists that message be embodied in and expressed by
structure.20
Although this treatment of Andean cloth techniques is perforce
summary, we do see that key technologies associated with cloth and
metal production shared stylistic modes, perhaps because those
modes are expressions of cultural ideals, that is, they incorporate
ideological concerns of the society at large. Lexicographic and ethno-
graphic studies of Andean metallurgical and weaving vocabularies
should certainly help to bridge the realm of technical process with
that of cosmic ideas about universal processes, and ethnohistoric re-
search on craft production and on Andean cosmologies is absolutely
essential in this regard. For example, both Regina Harrison and
Gerald Taylor, ethnohistorians of the Andes, in recent studies of late
16th- and early 17th-century Quechua religious texts, call attention to
the use in these texts of the Quechua term camay, the act of infusing
life spirit into an inanimate object.21 In various ritual poems that refer
to the acts of creation by Viracocha, the creator, the term camayis used
expressly to denote Viracocha's animating or breathing a spirit into an
object. Camayrefers to the domain of the material and of the concrete,
to the domain of people and of the natural and cultural objects they
fashion and use. Perhaps the notions of "technological essence"-of
the visually apprehended aspect of an object as revealing its inner
structure-are related to these fundamental Andean concepts of the
divine animation of all material things.22
In a recent and provocative article about the relations between pre-
cious metals and politics in the pre-Columbian era, Mary Helms com-
pares those sets of relations as they were manifest in the Andean area,
particularly in Incaic Peru, and in the Intermediate Area of lower
Central America and northern South America (including portions of
Nicaragua and Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and north-
20In thinking about the underlying similarities behind aspects of Andean prehistoric
metallurgical and cloth technologies, I have benefited greatly from discussions with two
scholars of Andean cloth production, William Conklin and Edward Franquemont.
21Regina Harrison, "Modes of Discourse: The Relacion de antigiiedadesdeste reynodel
Piru by Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua," in From Oral to Written
Expression:Native Andean Chroniclesof the Early Colonial Period, ed. Rolena Adorno (Syra-
cuse, N.Y., 1982), pp. 65-99; Gerald Taylor, "Camay,camac, et camasca dans le manu-
scrit quechua de Huarochiri,"Journal de la SocietedesAmericanistes63 (1974-76): 231-44.
221 am most grateful to the Andean ethnologist Tristan Platt for
calling my attention
to the Harrison article (n. 21 above) and to the possible relevance of the concept camay
to the technology of essences. In a personal communication of June 1982, while discuss-
ing Andean metallurgy, Platt speculated that "the notion of a divine force 'animating' a
particula- object could be equivalent to a divine metal 'giving life' to an alloy."

34 Heather Lechtman
ern Ecuador).23 For each of these two areas she describes the over-
riding metallurgical-technological style, the political organization, and
the ideologies of the ruling elites of the societies in question, seeking
interpretations that correlate metallurgical traditions with the role of
political elites. Her discussion of Incaic metalworking includes not
only its bias toward gold or gold-appearance but its commitment to a
long-standing Andean tradition of handling metal, a tradition based
on forging and joining pieces of metal to achieve three-dimensional
forms,24 as contrasted with the tradition of casting metal by the lost-
wax method which was overwhelmingly the practice in the Inter-
mediate Area. The Andean style she calls "architectural" in the sense
that objects were built or constructed from thin metal sheets. For the
ruling Inca elite, such constructions were often of gold or gold-
appearing metal:
In short, clothing, buildings, utensils, even (as effigies) people
and animals-all fundamental elements of the cultural setting in
which the nobility lived either symbolically or, to the extent
allowed by actual use of these golden goods, behaviorally-could
be built from sheets of gold and silver....
A simple and obvious message seems to be communicated by
such constructions. The Inca nobility apparently wished to be
construed as living in a world inherentlycomposed of the qualities
of the celestial realm from which they were descended and of
which, therefore, they too were inherently a part. Celestial qual-
ities were expressed in the colors of gold and silver and pos-
sibly encapsulated in the composition of gilded tumbagas.... If
we work with Lechtman's suggestion that in Andean thought the
surface material or condition of something expressed its inherent
essence, then to cover or sheath a wall or object or person in
golden color or to entirely create an object from segments of
golden (or gilded tumbaga) sheets was simply to state that the
structure, object, or person internally contained, or was composed
of, golden (celestial) qualities. In other words, the realm of the
Inca nobility, including the nobility themselves and all that sur-
rounded them, was not just associatedwith celestial goldness but
was considered as inherently"golden" in essence, quality, and con-
cept by virtue of being composed or constructed of goldness.
In this interpretive context, then, Incaic golden objects are not
viewed simply as golden imitations of nature or as beautiful utili-
tarian or decorative items but as tangible expressions of the
2:IMaryW. Helms, "Precious Metals and Politics: Style and Ideology in the Inter-
mediate Area and Peru,"Journal oJ Latin AmericanLore 7 (1981): 215-37.
2-I echtman, "The Central Andes-Metallurgy without Iron" (n. 14 above).

political ideology legitimizing the superiority of the elite of the

Inca state.25
Of course, the point behind the "technology of essences" is that the

essence must be part of the structure of the item in order to be
realized and made visible on its surface. Helms has turned the argu-
ment around, asserting that the Inca nobility manipulated the ideol-
ogy behind the technology to validate its claim to inherent godliness.
Thus stone walls sheathed with gold or gilt metal or rulers clothed in
gold had conferred on them automatically the essential quality that
ought to have been present internally.
To return to the technology itself: When we step back and look at
the two quite extraordinary metal-coloring systems invented by An-
dean metalworkers-electrochemical replacement and depletion
gilding and silvering-it is striking to realize that we are dealing not
with the metallurgy of gold or of silver but rather with the metal-
lurgy of copper, the metal that served as the basis for all the major
alloys developed in the Andes, including bronze. But unlike its use
in some weaponry, in textile manufacturing tools like needles and
spindle whorls, and in occasional agricultural implements, copper was
transformed when used as the carrier of color.
Most students of early metallurgies consider "true metallurgy" as
involving two important achievements: the winning of metals from
their ores and the alloying of metals. We are used to thinking of
copper as the "first" smelted metal and of copper-arsenic as the "first"
alloy system. But that is because our data have been taken almost
exclusively from the Old World, and even there recent evidence in-
dicates that lead smelting may predate copper smelting by several
millennia.26 From a comparative stance and a fresh look at events in
the New World, it seems quite likely that "true metallurgy" in both its
aspects-smelting (of copper-silver ores) and alloying (in the produc-
tion of solders)-was achieved in the Andes by the end of the Early
Horizon and before the emergence of the Mochica state. But the
Mochica put metallurgy on its feet. Copper became the metal on
which all further developments in alloying and in smelting were
based. In and of itself, copper was highly valued among the Mochica;
many of their tools were made of it, and it formed the basis of their
alloys. But in this latter role copper was in the service of attitudes
about metals-metals of adornment, metals of status, metals of
25Helms, quotation on p. 220.

26Noel H. Gale and Zofia Stos-Gale, "Lead and Silver in the Ancient Aegean," Sci-
entific American 244 (June 1981): 176-92.

36 Heather Lechtman
power-that influenced those alloys. They were alloys that altered the
properties of copper not so much to make it harder or stronger but to
confer on its surfaces a different color-indeed, to transform it so that
it actually seemed to be another metal altogether, sometimes metallic
silver but primarily metallic gold.
The copper-silver and copper-gold alloy systems developed during
the Early Intermediate Period, particularly on the north Peruvian
coast, had to be malleable, hard, and capable of retaining the shape
they assumed on plastic deformation through hammering. North
coast metallurgy was sheet metal oriented, and the alloys it developed
had to fulfill the requirements of a sheet metal tradition. Both
copper-silver and copper-gold did so admirably. In addition, the
Mochica used these alloys to produce metal qualities that were obvi-
ously paramount for them, goldenness and silveriness. In this sense,
copper, through its alloys, was a vehicle for achieving those desired
qualities. It remained a handmaiden to gold and to silver, both of
which continued to be used in the manufacture of the finest objects.
The interest in surfaces and in the display of gold as the significant
visual aspect conveyed by a metal object led to the development not
only of tumbagaalloys but also of gilding copper by means of external
systems as complex as electrochemical deposition. The sophistication
of Mochica metallurgy-one is tempted to say of Mochica
chemistry-is extraordinary. It gives us insight into what "metalness,"
at least in part, may have meant to the Mochica, and certainly what
resourceful means they used for achieving such qualities.
Ultimately, these attitudes became Andean values indoctrinated by
the Inca dynasty. The gold-silver focus within Andean society was, by
Inca times, transformed into a state-monopolized industry and one to
which the state committed substantial resources of labor and energy,
especially in the extraction and processing of the metals. They re-
mained metals of "charisma," concentrated in the hands of the few
and redistributed as tokens of royal esteem.
Copper and bronze were also highly valued, but the content of that
value is more difficult to assess. The balance between gold and silver,
on the one hand, and copper and its alloys, on the other, was never an
equal balance, probably because the former always had behind them
the weight of religious and political institutions. Copper was
nevertheless the vehicle through which the real achievements in An-
dean metallurgy took place, and it was on the threshold of assuming a
much more important role in Andean life when Andean civilization
was cut down by Spanish invaders in search of the rich gold and silver
deposits of the land.


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Andean Value Systems and the Development of Prehistoric Metallurgy

Author(s): Heather Lechtman

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The rich development of metallurgical technology that arose and

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Yeals Relative Chronology Histo-ical Events

1534 Colonial Period Spanish Empire

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recognize these functions in a series of artifacts ranging from the

9Julie Jones, "Mochica Works of Art in Metal: A Review," in Pre-ColumbianMetallurgy

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portance as conveyers of status and worldly or spiritual power was

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community during his lifetime. In addition, those of highest status

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FIG. 8.-Detail of a figure, executed in wool embroidery, on a Paracas mantle that

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proportions of those two metals. We used copper pennies and suc-

FIG;.11.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section cut through one surface of a

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FIG. 12.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section through a piece of hammered

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" Heather Lechtman, "The Gilding of Metals in Pre-Columbian Peru," in Application

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FI;. 13.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section through one surface of a

12Completetechnicaldescriptionsof copper-silverand copper-silver-goldalloys and

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mummy masks from Peru familiar to museum goers are of Chimu

Fi(;. 14.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section of a tiny fragment of metal

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-- ---- co @tL C.AO

Fi(.. 16.-Diagiram of the mechanisms by which Andean metalworker-s depletion gilt

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V~+A~ e~4,Au- <

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'9Anna H. Gayton, "The Cultural Significance of Peruvian Textiles: Production,

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sage as emerging from underlying, invisible structural relations. An-

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political ideology legitimizing the superiority of the elite of the

Of course, the point behind the "technology of essences" is that the

25Helms, quotation on p. 220.

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